sold website - new owner wants email history

I recently sold a website. The new owner has his lawyer involved in the sale. Now I have sold (and bought) many websites over the last 18 years, but I encountered a new issue in this one.

The new owner (and probably more specifically his lawyer) have asked me to send the email history in the website business, ie all the emails I have exchanged over the last couple of years (from the domain email of course).

I was surprised at this as I've never been asked to send any email history of any site I have ever sold.

The lawyers assertion is that there could be important agreements contained in amongst the emails.

I have explained any agreements ( and there are very few in legal terms) have been contained amongst other documents I have sent them .

I don't want to get too bogged down in the nitty gritty of this, but has anyone who has sold a business, especially a website, ever been asked to hand over their email history pertaining to that business? It's a completely new one to me, and I'm not too happy about this....someone reading all my email history for several years .

Where in the sale agreement does it say you have to transfer these e-mails? I would counter with an offer that you will archive the correspondence and if there is a legal query where the individual correspondence is required you will release the relevant e-mails at that time. I would also repeat that you have passed across all the legal agreements.

They are totally different components. All they have got is the domain name transferred and a copy of the website code/content. The copyright remains with you (unless explicitly passed across). They have not brought the email account or your support history with the hosting company or even your cPanel. All thay have is the domain name and a copy of the website.

Any agreements you had are null and void after the sale.

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Just to clarify - How does the sale/purchase agreement describe what is being sold?

I am not a lawyer and neither am i still in practice as a qualified accountant. Any comments I make are purely my personal opinion and not intended to be a substitute for paid professional advice. By their nature my comments are general in nature and may not reflect the totality of the query.

They might have done, it all depends on the sale & purchase agreement. If the purchase was viewed as the purchase of a business as going concern, then it could be totally reasonable to have all historic business data in the agreement.

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And for your question, I would always ask for history of emails, its like social media profiles, advertising campaigns, analytics for everything.

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That's interesting, you would seriously ask for someone's entire email history during the time they ran that business?

They may contain emails out to friends, to your wife, personal
stuff. I do not see emails as similar to social media contacts etc, at all. That's completely different in my view. Social media is for posting stuff you are happy for the world to see, not so with emails

'email accounts' was mentioned in the sales agreement, however I presumed it meant ongoing use of the email accounts.

I never imagined it meant the new owner wanted access to all the emails I had ever exchanged in the past. I've never heard of that practice at all in my life - buying a business and then saying ,now give me all your emails , I want to read all your personal emails for the last 2 or 3 years !

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Who is to say how much e-mail history you kept? Unless it is detailed in documents and in the agreements then what is to stop you saying that you never kept e-mails after the order/service was complete. I am not suggesting that you actually say this, but I cannot see how they can demand what was never itemised.

Raises a good point. Delete all your un needed email history before you sell a business / website. Avoids a problem.

Of course if they don't actually know what is in the email history or put conditions about deleting, nothing stopping you deleting stuff now.

Personally, I have always segregated my business email from personal email by running separately, probably harks back to my corporate career and early email policies, where you could get sacked for using emails for personal purposes.

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Unless it's in the sale agreement then why have they stopped at emails? Why not ask for letters, texts, phone calls etc. I can't see the difference between one form of business communication and another.

Unless it's in the sale agreement then why have they stopped at emails? Why not ask for letters, texts, phone calls etc. I can't see the difference between one form of business communication and another.

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That's because e-mail is electronic, it's just an easy target.

I would print some e-mails, give them the (full) bin from your shredder and invite them to reconstruct whatever they want.